Originally posted on IdahoEdNews.org on June 26, 2025
BOISE, ID – This year, lawmakers were dumbstruck — and displeased — when they learned a statewide online school put up to $13.6 million into education savings accounts for parents, siphoning state dollars away from day-to-day operations.
This shouldn’t catch legislators off guard next year.
The Legislature’s research arm is digging into Idaho’s online K-12 boom — including the sector’s biggest boomtown, the Idaho Home Learning Academy. Headquartered in the unlikely home base of Malad, a southeast Idaho hamlet near the Utah line, IHLA exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, serving 8,000 students statewide and offering ESAs of $1,700 per student.
The study will cover the biggest questions surrounding IHLA: its lackluster test scores, and the way it spends more than $55 million in annual state funding. And it’s probably overdue. IHLA’s enrollment has tripled over five years, and the Legislature slept through it.
“This is all a symptom of a very quickly evolving educational system in the state,” Senate Education Committee Chairman Dave Lent, R-Idaho Falls, said in an interview Wednesday. “Do we really have our arms around how this is working?”
Standardized test scores suggest the model isn’t working for many students. In 2024 — when IHLA was still under the umbrella of the Oneida School District, and virtual students made up the vast majority of overall district enrollment — only 25.5% of Oneida’s students were proficient or advanced on the math Idaho Standards Achievement Test, compared to 42% of students statewide. Only 39.8% of Oneida students were proficient or advanced in English language arts, as opposed to 53% statewide.
(IHLA now operates as a charter school, authorized by the Oneida district.)
IHLA’s grades and business model did come under scrutiny in January, during a day of tense House and Senate education committee hearings. As school director Terri Sorensen stumbled through awkward question-and-answer sessions, lawmakers like Sen. Jim Woodward pressed her on ESAs. Months later, Woodward is still irked that the school moved money around, on its own accord.
“(IHLA) just quietly put that in place without a policy decision from the people of the state of Idaho,” Woodward, R-Sagle, said in an interview Wednesday.
Lent tried to rein in the virtual schools in general, and IHLA in particular.
In late March, he ran a bill that would have required third-party approval for any contract with a private “educational services provider” — such as the vendors who receive some $21 million a year from IHLA, and manage the school’s payments to parents. Lent’s bill also would have placed all virtual charters under the jurisdiction of the Idaho Public Charter School Commission. This proved to be a poison pill. Advocates for virtual charters mobilized, and the bill stalled in the Senate.
But by then, a bipartisan group of seven lawmakers had already asked for a study of IHLA.
“There are aspects of the authorization and operations of this charter school that are unclear and lack transparency,” said the March 5 letter, co-signed by House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, and House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, among others. “(A study) will either highlight problems that should be addressed or provide the public with confidence that processes are being followed correctly.”
Co-signers included Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, and Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, who chair the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee, or JLOC, which directs legislative research. Redman says he likes the virtual education concept, and believes that different children learn in different ways, but he says he wants to know more. “Until this session, I didn’t know what Oneida was doing with their virtual schools,” Redman said in an interview Wednesday.
At JLOC’s behest, the Office of Performance Evaluations, which takes on research projects for the Legislature.
OPE’s report on Oneida and virtual schools is due in December, weeks before the start of the 2026 legislative session.
It’s early, but it’s already evident that the report will follow the dollars, and dig into an unorthodox school budget. And there’s plenty of fodder there.
While most traditional districts and charters put the vast majority of their money into staff pay and benefits, IHLA nearly flips this formula on its head. According to its 2024-25 budget report, obtained by Idaho Education News, IHLA spent just $21.2 million of its $56.6 million budget on salaries and benefits. The bulk of the budget, $34.4 million, falls under the heading of “purchased services,” and would include the money that goes to IHLA’s educational services providers.
A two-page document — spelling out the scope of the OPE report — drills into the staffing. IHLA employed 327 certified instructional staffers this past school year, roughly one teacher for every 24 students. But a startling 82% of these employees are working on part-time contracts. OPE says its report will examine whether “the salaries of staff are aligned with the state funds provided for such positions.”
One influential lawmaker welcomes the OPE review, but isn’t alarmed by these staff numbers.
Rep. Wendy Horman, the co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, says IHLA staffing reflects a model where parents are co-teachers, determining how, what and when their kids learn.
“It’s by design,” Horman, R-Idaho Falls, said this week. “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”
While legislators requested an IHLA report, they will get more than they asked for. The report will look more broadly at virtual education — as roughly 20 school districts are developing their own models for online options.
Woodward and other lawmakers support the expanded scope. Woodward notes that his hometown Boundary County School District is growing its online school, taking in families looking to flee the turmoil at the nearby West Bonner School District. “Some good has come of it.”
Online education isn’t going away. Across the state, traditional districts are viewing the online model as a way to grow enrollment and secure state funding — as Oneida did for years. A behemoth virtual charter school like IHLA, with its 8,000 students, isn’t just going to vanish overnight; the whole debate will boil down to who oversees the school, and how it will be allowed to spend state money.
It could be one of the more contentious education debates of 2026. It shouldn’t sneak up on legislators this time. The OPE’s research could give them the crash course they need.
Kevin Richert writes a weekly analysis on education policy and education politics. Look for his stories each Thursday.
More reading: The Idaho Home Learning Academy’s special education problems will take years to solve.